$ cat foo.pl use strict; use warnings; my $string = qq{ }; my( $fail ) = $string =~ m{ \[CDATA\[ (.*) ]]> }xms; print $fail, "\n"; my( $better ) = $string =~ m{ \[ CDATA \[ (.*?) \]\] }x; print $better, "\n"; $ perl foo.pl Please ... question ). ]]>